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February 12th, 2013 23:00

Major Issues & Problems with Dell XPS 12 Convertible Ultrabook Tablet?

I had the (refurbished) XPS 12 Convertible for about 10 hours now and I am scared of what I have seen so far and what there is to come.

1.  WiFi connectivity gets lost/broken very often and/or stuck in 'Limited' status (no connectivity).

2. WiFi always is disconnected after closing / opening the lid and often times is unable to get signal back (or takes long time 3-7 minutes) for the signal to return. I have made the appropriate setting adjustment for windows not to cut power to the WiFi Card when in sleep mode, and also set the power settings to Maximum Performance. No luck.  I have installed all of the latest drivers from Dell and, with support, also tried the Intel (more updated) drivers for Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235. No luck. Update to new Bios, still no major improvement. After hours with Dell support, it looks like they will send someone over to replace the WiFi card.

I was hoping that was it and that's the only issue I'd deal with. But wait, there is more:

3. Track pad is odd. I am not doing anything fancy, I just want to use it as a courser and left/right mouse click. Sometimes it is totally unresponsive, you have to move your hand off of it and try again for it to register that you are touching it. Sometimes it ignores left or right mouse clicks as if they never happened.

4. Screen brightness a mind of its own too. I have set the screen to be on Maximum brightness in all conditions (power & battery) and have disabled any dell options, that I can find, for it to manage brightness for me. Yet, half of the time it is at half brightness (thought I set it to maximum) and dims/goes bright on its own as needed. Is there a hidden option/menu for this 'feature'? The only way to get the full-brightness back on is to close the lid and open it again, it starts with full brightness (for a while).

5. The auto-rotate sometimes doesn't register that the screen was flipped . I simply have to move it to another side and back to the position that I want in order for me to get it to rotate correctly (I have not disabled auto rotate). I am scared of what I have seen so far.

Given the above, should I call dell and ask them not to do a WiFi replacement and instead replace the whole ultra-book or is this such a common issue that I will get the same thing again?

I was sooooo looking forward to this 'system' and to get my hands on it. But now, I am not sure. I do love how it feels, looks, how quit it is, and its overall potential but for a system that costs as much as it does, I can't have these issues both in terms of functionality and price. The above is just Day 1, about 10 hours.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

20 Posts

April 16th, 2014 12:00

I'm in the process of testing the xps 12 for a few of us at work and just yesterday I sent an email listing almost exactly your top three issues. I've had quirky issues with touchpad but because I basically have every function turned off is the reason I probably haven't experienced your issue. I've only had the xps12 about 3 weeks and so far I've reloaded windows 8.1 update 1 on it about 5 times trying different driver combinations with each reload. This has not helped. I continue to see blue screens, network disconnects, services not starting properly, inconsistent battery drain and my favorite was when the entire metro interface stopped working. Other than the default windows OS I'm installing office 2013 pro, Facebook app, flipboard app, and yahoo mail app. Ive tried only the dell website drivers, downloading up to date drivers from the manufacturers and getting the drivers off of the default built that came on the system and I'm still seeing issues. Its really strange though because they seem to only happen after a few days of usage. After ever reload I noticed I can go a day or two and then strangeness starts happening. Last night the audio wouldn't work because it said the services were stopped. This morning the network services were not started. I really think it has something to do with the way its going to sleep as you mentioned. Because I can reboot the system and everything usually starts up fine. The metro issue required a reload which I sort of connected back to solid stated drives and windows 8. Because there are a lot of articles <ADMIN NOTE: Substitute character removed as per TOU> back 2 years on that same issue so its not just the xps12. I also believe that's way the battery seems to leak is because the sleep isn't really functioning properly. I noticed that intel and dell have settings you can adjust but changing them doesn't really seem to help from what I've seen. I have no idea what's causing all these issues but I really do love everything about the laptop. I know I didn't provide any solutions but I wanted you to know your not alone and I'm working my hardest to find solutions because like I said I really like this laptop and little quirks like this annoy me.

20 Posts

April 21st, 2014 12:00

Techmart, -What version of windows are you running. Is this 8.1 by chance? -Also you said you made power adjustments on the wireless card. How did you go about doing that? I have looked under power settings and under the properties in device manager and (as suggested by several websites) and cant seem to find any power settings that I can change for the wireless card. -I even uninstalled the quickset drivers hoping that would help because that installed the dell power management stuff. But still no dice.

20 Posts

June 12th, 2014 08:00

I just wanted to pass it along that I opened a ticket with intel and they were able to replicate the issue with the wireless card dropping the connection after sleep. They have sent me an updated driver and it appears to have fixed my issue mainly because I know have the power tab under the device properties that lets me turn off the ability of letting windows disable the device. here is the download link. "Thank you for contacting Intel Customer Support. I would like to inform you that the new driver version 17.0.3 is now available at the download center, please go to the following link and select the one for your OS version, verify you download the 32 or 64 bit release depending on your Operating System: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Wireless+Networking&ProductLine=Intel%C2%AE+Wi-Fi+Products&ProductProduct=Intel%C2%AE+Dual+Band+Wireless-AC+7260&ProdId=3714&LineId=1784&FamilyId=1783 - After you download the file, please Uninstall Intel® PROSet/Wireless Software. - Restart your PC and go to Device manager - Network adapters, If it is using the old Intel driver, right click on the adapter and uninstall the driver (selecting the option to delete the driver from your PC). Then reboot. - Proceed to install the driver 17.0.3 you recently downloaded. Sorry for the lack of no spaces. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to put them in the post. I promis I have this separated out.

1 Message

May 29th, 2015 18:00

This worked perfectly!

Control Panel -- Power Options -- Change What Happens when Closing Lid -- Advanced Options -- Display --- Adaptive Brightness "Off".

Works Great!

1 Message

July 20th, 2016 22:00

Excellent thank you! this resolved the issue.

4. Settings > Change PC Settings > General > Screen > Adjust My Screen Brightness Automatically (set this to off)

5. Never had a problem with screen rotation

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